The Sober Eagle vs. The Milk

Dear blog,

Well, today is March 5th. Four years ago today I had my first day of sobriety. Sobriety from what? I hear you ask. Well, no I don't, but I'm assuming you would ask, since you don't know anything about me blog. So I shall enlighten thee. After I just barely survived Graph vs. Host Disease (my body was rejected by the bone marrow transplant that had been used to get me in remission from the leukemia), my body was bloated, disfigured, and to me, disgusting. I hated how I looked, hated how I felt, always in pain, depressed, you name it. So to hide all of that crap away and not have to think about it, I began to heavily abuse my medications, of which there was a LOT. On a regular basis I was popping 15-20 pills in one go, and would spend several hours in a drugged stupor, feeling very relaxed for a bit. It was a way to escape all of what had happened to me, but it wound up doing a lot more damage than it did good. I lost friends, hurt people, nearly died a couple times, and by using the drugs like that, couldn't face the truth and start moving on with my life. After about a year of this, I went into an outpatient rehab program and started to get clean. Several times I relapsed, pressure and stress getting to me in my weakened state, but I persevered. A little less than a year after I started rehab, I abused my pills for the last time and that was in early 2010. March 5th to be precise. Ergo the post today explaining all of this. It's been nice being clean, I like having my own thoughts back and control of my actions, even if I make mistakes, they're MY mistakes and I can learn from them. I can remember things now, my mind is my own. For me, that's really the most important aspect of any of this, having control of myself again.

Now I know in my last post I talked about posting a story, but there is a bit you should know about it first before I put it here. Nick and I were working on our books a couple weeks ago and we decided to do a writing exercise. I picked one out that said something along the lines of: "Write a gruesome ending to a story. Just a random story and only write the ending to it." We modified it a bit and wrote a gruesome ending to a short premise, which went like this: A man is sent out to get milk for his kid by his wife, and now he is heading back home after getting the milk. Well we started writing, and 10 minutes later, this happened:
(Note: If you aren't a fan of overly gory things, you probably shouldn't read this)

"Jacob looked up at the sky and squinted. Something was hovering up above, following him. He cradled the milk like he did his young daughter and picked up the pace. Suddenly, a massive weight slammed into his back, sending him sprawling milk-first into the ground. The container exploded, spreading the white liquid every which way. Jacob groaned and looked around. Red was beginning to seep into the pool of milk, tainting it pink. Blood. His blood.

It felt like spears had impaled him. The thing above him shifted, and he craned his head to see a massive eagle glaring hungrily at him, the size of a bus. He opened his mouth to scream, and the eagle opened its beak with a triumphant cry before slamming down with one deft peck and stabbing Jacob through the head with the sharpened tip. 

Jacob's body gave a little twitch, spasmed, and went still. Blood gushed from the massive wound as the eagle spread its wings and began to haul the lifeless body up into the air, bits of brain leaving a trail so gruesome not even Hanzel and Gretel would follow it. The chicks would feast well tonight. The milk continued to spread, and in the distance, a baby began to cry."

And it's fine to read again if you skipped the story.

Look, I said it was gruesome. Was I lying blog? I don't know if you're squeamish or not, my guess is not, since you're just an extension of my brain first and foremost, and a digital entity that probably doesn't care much for humans second and aftmost (I don't think that's a thing). Either way, I hope you liked it.

 And in space news, scientists were able to measure the spin of a supermassive black hole 6 billion, yes BILLION lightyears away, with a lightyear being 6 trillion miles. 6 trillion times 6 billion equals...a lot of miles. That's far, really far. To top it off, the black hole was spinning at 50% the speed of light. That's fast (186,000 miles a second), really fast. It's pretty cool looking too. The purple things are the galaxy that the black hole is in, and actually the light comes from the massive energy coming out of the black hole (the object is called a quasar). The reason there appears to be more than one of them is because light is being twisted by a large galaxy in front of it (gravitational lensing), quadrupling up the image so you see it multiple times. Nifty, right? Maybe I'm the only one who thinks that. If you agree blog, here's a link to check it out: Cool Space Link to Click On

Well I think that about wraps up this edition of me talking to a blog by typing and not speaking the entire time. Yup. Fun stuff. Have a good night blog.

Sincerely, Your Sober Master, Andrew

Progress Meets Digress

Dear blog,

Well Tucker, the dog, is fine. After a night in the pet ER and some charcoal paste later, he came home the next day and was back to his normal self. This included bounding around with his best friend, barking at every damn thing that moves outside, and finding the singular most awkward looking sleeping spaces he can find. I know you don't know much about sleeping, being you're just a digital entity, but trust me, he's a funky sleeping dog. I think you can see my point? This wasn't a set-up picture...that's just his normal sleeping arrangement. If anything, that's actually pretty mild for him. But I digress, as I often do. It's fun, digression, like a tangent, but with more acidic sounding syllables.



This weekend was extremely productive for me. After several days of not writing, I finally got my ass in gear and plowed headlong in the fray! (Frey if you're British) It's been insane. No. Insane's a bad word for it, because that's too polite. What it's actually been is brutal. Yesterday I managed to give myself a stomach ache from stress alone, only to replicate the same feat tonight. I haven't eaten dinner two nights in a row. Although I did have a couple frozen thin mints, because even if your stomach is dangling out of your abdomen after an encounter with a bus-sized eagle (there's a story related to that, I'll post it Wednesday), you have to eat frozen thin mints. It's impossible not to. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's the fourth law of thermodynamics. Look it up. Anyways, more digress! So while the writing has been very difficult for me, I'm finding it easier to write it down. Not in the sense that it's less painful, but in the sense that I'm able to get more words down before I have to give in and stop. I did two days of 1500 words, and today got close to 3000 words. Progress! Be proud of me blog, there's a long ways left to go for the really tough stuff, and it only gets worse from here. Well, until it gets better anyways, but until then...it gets worse.

Yes...yes I would

I read a very interesting article today about how we could use zepplin-like airships to go explore Venus. Since the surface of Venus is the most hostile of any planet (850 degrees Fahrenheit, 100 times the pressure at sea level, and sulfuric acid? Yea, that's hostile), it is one of the most difficult to explore. However, by cruising through the clouds in giant airships, you can actually find a very modest room temperature world atop the hellish domain below! Such a ship could actually fly around the planet in about six days (coasting on the winds) and would last for up to a year before it lost buoyancy and slowly dropped to the ground to be incinerated like several probes before it. With that kind of idea, really you could actually float an entire city in Venus if you had people crazy enough to do it! Now where would you find people like that...welcome to Columbia 2.0!

I know that last post I didn't give you a space thing, shame on me! Here you go! It's a spiral galaxy with several more distance galaxies in the background!

Humbly apologizing for the lack of a space picture but still really in control so you aren't allowed to complain, Andrew

The Weather Outside is Frightful, But This Blog is So Delightful

Dear blog,

When it rains...well, in California it's just a freakish random hodgepodge of oddness. I woke up to find it lightly raining, and within ten minutes it was pouring, and within an hour it was dumping down tons of rain SIDEWAYS. Bits of trees fell into the street, leaves strewn about in long piles, detritus littering the road like the scene from a Victorian era battlefield, it was nice. We've had a long time without rain now, and even if it all falls down at once, it's definitely a long way toward getting us the water we so desperately need. However, it's not all good news. California drivers treat even the first smattering of sprinkles like the impending apocalypse, so you can imagine what an actual rainstorm must seem like. If aliens had invaded and started vaporizing everyone, I think we would be less surprised and freaked out than we are when WEATHER show us! Drivers going half the speed limit and weaving about every which way because they can't be bothered to look too much for the white lane dividers are not exactly my idea of safe driving conditions. Add to that random gusts of winds that try to nudge my car wherever it pleases (not that I'm so easily swayed), and you have a disaster in the making. I saw not one, but two paramedics with sirens on in a ten minute drive alone. What say you to that my blogged friend?

I'm excited though. All the TV shows put on hiatus while the Winter Olympics were going on are coming back! After surviving my own digital drought with only one or two shows to amuse me, I now have nearly a dozen to choose from! I'm practically giddy! Almost. Or something.

Also, our dog Tucker is in the pet emergency room after probably ingesting some kind of pill for something or other. He's been given a lovely helping of charcoal, which will bind to the chemicals and make him sick for a bit to get as much of it out as possible. I did something similar a few years ago, and the charcoal paste is not exactly the most pleasant thing in the world, if I'm being honest. Which I am. It's like dry molasses mixed with severely burnt marshmallows. Now, I'm not averse to burnt things, I like my toast singed and my marshmallows to spend at least three or four seconds on fire, but this isn't anything like that. This would have the same equivalent taste of leaving a piece of bread in a fireplace for the duration of a five-hour fire and then scooping up the ashes and mixing it into wood glue and eating it. Sound pleasant? I didn't think so. Poor dog. And yes, charcoal toothpaste used to be a thing. Crazy people.

I have to pacify the evil demon cat now. She won't stop meowing. Blog, if you never hear from me again...the cat did it.

Hopefully still yours in one piece after this, Andrew

Exo-Progress...o

Dear blog,

Today I saw my friend Nick Hollon for our weekly meeting regarding a joint project the two of us are working on. After I was diagnosed with AML (acute myeloid leukemia), he put together a project to run 3000 miles to raise money and support for leukemia research, and has since become an ultramarathoner (essentially crazy people who enjoy lots of leg pain). He's been working on his memoir about running, life, liberty, and the pursuit (get it?...cause he's a runner!) of more insane races. I've been working on my own book about my journey through hell, a little bit farther, and back. A while ago we decided to team up and work together and have been meeting up recently to discuss progress and work on ideas as a duo. Today we discussed ways of making our books sound interesting and how to pitch them to publishers. The guy has such an interesting story to tell, his madness knows no bounds, and it's inspirational as all get out. You would like him blog, he's a cool cat. 

A cool cat = Nick

While he's been editing his first draft, I've been pumping out my own rough draft of my own book. As you may know, I went through all kinds of hellish insane sh** and want to share my story. Well, reliving all the memories from the chemotherapy and all of the side effects from treatment has been...difficult. Some of the memories were locked away, so retrieving them is almost like experiencing. them for the very first time. It leaves me shaken up sometimes, near tears other times, and occasionally a happy memory will slip through and make me laugh. But, my lovely blog, I'm getting to the worst of it, and it's left me wondering if I can do this. I know the doubt isn't helpful, but I must continue through. If not for myself and the healing that writing out my story might bring, than for the people it could help: other cancer survivors, their families, people who need to become aware of just how difficult living with some of the side effects from treatments are. And of course, I can't let down Nick. So I will shoulder my pain, stare it down, remind myself that I have already survived and won, and write on.

I've been thinking of things to put on you lately as well blog. I don't want to neglect you and leave you to rot in obscurity like your predecessors, I'm already quite fond of you. I'll be tweaking your appearance too, so you'll look all beautified in the future. One of my ideas is to include writing of some sort, perhaps excerpts from my memoirs or even my freakishly long novel (that will be split into a series once I get back on that project), maybe short stories. Another idea is to actually see if I can do a communal short story, starting a sentence and seeing if I can get people who read you to come up with the next one, and the next person to come up with the next sentence, and so on and so forth. What do you think blog, would you like that?

Today also marks a glorious day in space exploration! (Blog, if you want to skip this part, go ahead. I'm acutely aware that my interest in space may not match yours) 715 new exoplanets were discovered using the data from the Kepler space telescope, nearly DOUBLING the amount of exoplanets we already knew! We're getting close to TWO THOUSAND known exoplanets! Of those 715, four were near-Earth sized and within the habitable zone, making them possible candidates for harboring life as we know it! (This of course does not account for life as we do NOT know it, but really, that's not the point at the moment) It might even be that I helped find some of these planets, thanks to a site called Planet Hunters, where you can sift through starlight data and find dips in light where an exoplanet passes in front of its host star! It's a lot more exciting than it sounds (to me anyways), I always get giddy when I see a possible transit, knowing that the dip in light I'm seeing might be a world trillions upon trillions of miles away...and wonder if anything is looking back.

I hope you and I can have a nice, pleasant relationship my blog minion, for I do enjoy your company. Talk to you soon my itsy-bytsy friend. 

Your benevolent overlord, Andrew